Baseball, he told me, had taken a strong hold on Australia.

“I don’t hit well,” he said, “but I can catch what you call flies! I can catch the widest flies that are knocked.”

Which gift would probably be useless in America, where most of the flies knocked are bloody narrow.

Before I left him I learned also that Les Darcy was all right at heart, but that the professional “sports” spoiled him, and that he could have “knocked Jack Johnson, Stanley Ketchel, Billy Papke or Jess Willard clean out of the ring.”

He is going back to the trenches tonight, and I hope there are plenty of extremely intelligent Heinies there to keep him busy interpreting till his next leave. Interpreting, I should think, would be much pleasanter than going over the top.

Tuesday, August 21.